WarSclerotic

Turkey would join coalition against Syria, says FM – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Davutoglu says Ankara will join any international coalition even if wider consensus isn’t reached at UN’s Security Council; Hague reiterates sentiment

Reuters

Turkey would join any international coalition against Syria even if a wider consensus on action cannot be reached at the UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying on Monday.

“We always prioritize acting together with the international community, with United Nations decisions. If such a decision doesn’t emerge from the UN Security Council, other alternatives … would come onto the agenda,” Davutoglu told the Milliyet daily.

“Currently 36-37 countries are discussing these alternatives. If a coalition is formed against Syria in this process, Turkey would take its place in this coalition.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said reiterated the sentiment saying it would be possible to respond to chemical weapons use in Syria without the unanimous backing of the United Nations Security Council.

“Is it possible to respond to chemical weapons without complete unity on the UN Security Council? I would argue yes it is otherwise it might be impossible to respond to such outrages, such crimes, and I don’t think that’s an acceptable situation,” Hague said on BBC radio.

Turkey has emerged as one of Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s most vocal critics during the two-and-a-half year conflict, sheltering half a million refugees and allowing the opposition to organize on its soil.

The NATO member has criticized world powers for failing to take a decisive stance. The UN Security Council has been hamstrung by the opposition of veto-wielding members, Russia and China, to any firm action.

“From the outset, Turkey has argued that the international community must not stand by in the face of the Assad regime’s massacres,” Davutoglu said.

“Leaving unpunished leaders and regimes which resort to such practices undermines the deterrence of the international community. Those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity must definitely be punished.”

Attention on Syria | JPost | Israel News.

Has Assad come to view the international community as incapable of action, especially with his Russian and Chinese backers at the Security Council?

Steinitz: It is ‘crystal clear’ Assad used chemical weapons on mass scale | JPost | Israel News.

It is “crystal clear” that Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons five days ago in an attack that killed hundreds of people, International Relations Minister Yuval Steintz said Monday.

Although it is true that this is not the first time Assad has used chemical weapons, Steinitz said, saying he has used them two or three times in the past, this is the first time he has used them on a mass scale.

Steinitz, speaking at a press conference sponsored by the Jerusalem Press Club, said that this was the first time chemical weapons were used on a mass scale against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them two decades ago.

Picking up on a theme Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu first spoke of publicly on Sunday, Steinitz said that “what happened in Syria should remind us how dangerous it is if Iran is able to complete its military nuclear project and produce atomic bombs.”

Steinitz said that just as the Syrians used chemical weapons against their own people, the Iranians are capable of using nuclear weapons because, like the Syrians, they have “no moral compunctions.”

While calling on the world to stop Assad, Steinitz said Israel would not interfere in the turmoil roiling the Arab world. Asked if Jerusalem was concerned about Syrian retaliation against Israel in case of an American attack, Steinitz said, “I think it will be insane for somebody to try to provoke Israel.”

“But of course we are prepared for any scenario,” he added.

Assad dismissed Western allegations that he used chemical weapons as politically motivated and warned Washington any US military intervention would fail in an interview published in a Russian newspaper on Monday.

Israel Hayom | Steinitz: Assad won’t rush to retaliate against Israel if US attacks Syria.

Washington and Moscow Have the Keys.

Amir Rapaport

25/8/2013

The IAF’s strike in Lebanon Friday morning went by without setting the northern region on fire. However, the risk of an escalation in the northern arena near the end of the summer remains considerably large – primarily due to the possibility that the US may attack Syria in response for the Assad forces’ use of chemical weapons.

This possibility became very tangible in this weekend, and Israel may sustain fire as a result.

Let’s begin with the strike in Lebanon: unless there are no unexpected developments, this is the end of an episode that will quickly be forgotten. It began with the fire of four rockets towards Israel’s Western Galilee region last Thursday. The fire was the handiwork of elements that identify themselves with Global Jihad. The IAF’s response was intended to signal that Israel will not tolerate occasional fire towards northern cities and towns, nothing more. Since Hezbollah is not involved, or because Israel has no interest in holding Hassan Nasrallah accountable at this time, the incident seems to be behind us.

The Syrian story is entirely different, and the use of rockets loaded with Sarin gas by forces loyal to Syrian President Assad last week seems more and more like a formative event.

The Syrian issue (and the events in Egypt) is at the core of every strategic discussion between Israel and the US in the recent period. Last Wednesday, when horrific images came from the outskirts of Damascus (Israeli intelligence determined that the Assad forces massively used chemical weapons), a phone conversation was held between US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and IDF Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon. On Friday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, spoke on the ‘hot line’ as well. Gantz updated Dempsey about the attack in Lebanon, but it can be assumed that the primary topic of the discussion was the possibility that the US will carry out a military action against Syria, and the implications of such a move from Israel’s perspective.

Dempsey will arrive to Jordan in the next week. More importantly, according to reports from Washington, the US has moved its naval destroyers in the area of the Mediterranean Sea eastwards towards Syria. US President Barack Obama held deliberations this weekend on the question of what to do with Syria.

The element pushing towards this dramatic US measure is, of course, the red line established by Obama in 2012 that the US will act if Syria were to use its chemical weapons. Up until now, Assad has ignored this red line under an assumption that the US is not really interested in operating against him. However, it seemed this weekend that the photos and videos broadcast around the world leave the US with no choice but to act in some manner (Assad can only be jealous of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who once massacred many without incurring the wrath of the world, in an era where it was possible to prevent the distribution of such documentation beyond Syria). The whole Middle East is waiting to see how the US will respond after failing to meet its own red line when Assad used chemical weaponry on March 19.

What halted any US action against Syria so far was a Russian threat to arm its ally, Assad, ith advanced SA-300 antiaircraft missiles and to veto any military action proposed at the UN Security Council (along with China).

The US will be interested in gathering the Security Council’s support for an act against Israel, such as in the case of the joint attack on Libya which brought down Muammar Gaddafi, but the odds of that seem slim. It may be satisfied with a NATO-based Western coalition (such as the one that was in Kosovo in the 1990s).

What are the US military options? The US military has had a plan for employing 40,000-60,000 soldiers in a land operation in Syria for a while now, in the form of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking over the Syrian territory may be quick, but the complications would follow afterwards. The chance that Barack Obama will get the US entangled in an extensive operation in Syria after taking forces out of Iraq and before completing the extraction of its forces from Afghanistan seems almost nonexistent.

The US could also carry out a one-time attack or a short series of attacks with Tomahawk cruise missiles from the sea, or bombs dropped from aircraft to Syrian territory. The chances of this occurring are fairly high. The risk of complications in such a situation is low, but so will be the effectiveness: hundreds of people are killed on average every day in Syria. A few US bombs, even if aimed towards symbols of the regime, will not really undermine Assad’s rule.

The US has another possibility – enforce an aerial and naval blockage on Syria. Carrying this out will not be complex and the effectiveness of a blockage could be considerable (especially if it prevents the transfer of weaponry to Assad from Iran and Russia). However, the likelihood of this scenario is low, primarily with regards to a naval blockade, due to the concern that such a blockade could result in a head-to-head confrontation with Russia.

In any case, the US will attempt to get the support of the Arab world during Dempsey’s visit to the region next week. It certainly won’t carry out any military activity that comes from Israel. In the coming days, the US generals will look for creative ideas on how to respond (such as a possible limited commando operation on the ground) in order to present them to the administration.

From Israel’s point of view, any attack on Syrian soil has the risk of leading to retaliatory fire towards Israel. Assad will attempt to attack Israel, primarily if he feels that his regime is in serious, tangible danger (and yes, he might launch chemical weapons towards the country).  All of the scenarios will be taken into account before a US response is underway, if any response does in fact occur. Israel is presently assessing that a US measure will take place. The keys to the decision are located in both Washington and in Moscow.

Syria will require more than cruise missiles – The Washington Post.

Barack Obama’s logic for bombing Syria: The United States will seek to put an end to Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons. – Slate Magazine.

President Obama will likely bomb Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria. Here is the logic—and limits—for the president’s plan of attack.

By Fred Kaplan|Posted Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, at 4:59 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Syrian army tanks in Damascus on Saturday. Obama may be considering a strike against Assad’s regime.

Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images

It seems likely that President Obama will bomb Syria sometime in the coming weeks.

His top civilian and military advisers are meeting in the White House on Saturday to discuss options. American warships are heading toward the area; those already there, at least one of which had been scheduled for a port call, are standing by. Most telling perhaps is a story in the New York Times, noting that Obama’s national-security aides are studying the 1999 air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for action in Syria.

In that conflict 14 years ago, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, an autonomous province of Serbia, were being massacred by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. President Bill Clinton, after much reluctance, decided to intervene, but couldn’t get authorization from the U.N. Security Council, where Russia—Serbia’s main ally—was certain to veto any resolution on the use of force. So Clinton turned to NATO, an appropriate instrument to deal with a crisis in the middle of Europe.

The parallels with Syria are obvious. In this case too, an American president, after much reluctance, seems to be considering the use of force but can’t get authorization from the U.N. because of Russia’s (and China’s) certain veto. The pressures to act have swelled in recent days, with the growing evidence—gleaned not just from Syrian rebels but also from independent physicians’ groups and U.S. intelligence—that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons, killing more than 1,000 civilians.

But where can Obama turn for the legitimacy of a multinational alliance? Nobody has yet said, but a possible answer is, once again, NATO—this time led perhaps by Turkey, the alliance’s easternmost member, whose leaders are very concerned by the growing death toll and instability in Syria just across their southern border.

The weapons that NATO used—and, more important, did not use—in Kosovo are also likely to appeal to President Obama. Clinton was insistent that no U.S. ground troops be sent to aid the Albanians and told his commanders to keep from losing a single American in the fight, if possible.

And so, the Kosovo campaign was, from America’s vantage, strictly an air war. (Just two U.S. servicemen were killed, and not in battle but in an Apache helicopter that crashed during an exercise.) The air war went on for what seemed, at the time, an eternity—78 days. More than 1,000 NATO planes (including the first Predator drones) flew a total of 38,000 combat sorties. The bombs—most of them dropped from altitudes of 10,000 feet and higher, to avoid air-defense batteries—seemed to have no effect on Milosevic’s actions until the final days of the campaign, and so NATO’s commanders kept adjusting and expanding the target list, which ranged from military bases, factories, and electrical power plants to individual Serbian tanks on the battlefield.

Bad intelligence led to a few horrific mistakes: the bombing of an Albanian caravan, which was confused with a Serbian convoy, and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which was thought to be a military relay station. In all, “collateral damage” over the 78 days killed an estimated 1,200 civilians

In the end, though, the war was won. The strategic goals were to stop the fighting, force Milosevic to pull back his army, restore Kosovo as an autonomous Albanian enclave, and insert NATO troops—30,000 of them—as peacekeepers. All the goals were met.

During and after the war, many Republicans and some retired U.S. military officers lambasted Clinton for relying so heavily on NATO. They called it a war “by committee” and claimed that it could have been won much more quickly had America gone it alone. But Gen. Wesley Clark, who was NATO chief at the time, later argued in his book, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat, that the multilateral approach was necessary for two reasons: to give the war legitimacy (especially given the lack of a U.N. resolution) and to counter whatever resistance the Russians might muster (in the end, Milosevic surrendered when he realized that, despite earlier promises, Moscow was not coming to his rescue).

Let’s say that Obama agrees that NATO could be the key force of an air campaign in Syria—and that enough NATO members agree to go along. (In Kosovo, every member of the alliance, except Greece, played some kind of role.) What would be the war’s objectives?

This is the crucial question of any military intervention. It should be asked, and answered, before a decision is made to intervene—along with a calculation of how much effort might be needed to accomplish those objectives and whether the cost is worth the benefit.

A few things are clear from Obama’s record as commander-in-chief: He tends to resist the use of military force. When he sees it as unavoidable, he tends to steer clear of grandiose objectives, and he demands that allied nations come along, even take the lead, especially if their interests in the conflict outweigh ours.

If Obama does use force in Syria, he will do so because of clear evidence that Assad’s regime has killed lots of civilians with chemical weapons. Two considerations will likely drive his decision, if it comes to that. First, he has drawn a “red line” on this issue, publicly, at least five times in the last year, and failure to follow through—especially after the latest revelations—would send confusing signals, at best, about U.S. resolve and credibility. Second, failure to respond would erode, perhaps obliterate, the taboo that the international community has placed on chemical weapons (especially nerve gas) since the end of World War I. I suspect that this factor may be more pertinent to Obama, who takes the issue of international norms very seriously.

So the No. 1 objective of a U.S. air campaign against Syria would be the seemingly limited one of deterring or preventing Assad’s regime from using chemical weapons again. However, Obama’s top generals and intelligence officers would likely tell him that they can’t do much to fulfill this mission. They probably don’t know where the remaining chemical stockpile is located, so they wouldn’t be able to destroy it. And the notion of using military force to deter some future action is a bit vague: It’s unclear whether it would have any effect on Assad. Obama would also have to specify the additional damage he’d inflict if Assad ignored the message, and he’d have to be reasonably sure ahead of time that that damage would be enough to deter him from taking the dare.

A more extravagant, but possibly more feasible, target of an air strike might be Assad’s regime itself—with the objective of destroying it or at least severely weakening it.

In an Aug. 5 letter to Congress, made public just this past week, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a comment pertinent to this point. He said that if Assad’s regime were to topple, none of the myriad Syrian rebel factions are currently in a position to fill the power vacuum. Nor, if any of these factions did come to power, do they seem inclined to promote U.S. interests. For that reason, he expressed skepticism about the good of taking the side of a particular rebel faction or, presumably, sending its fighters more arms.

However, Dempsey also said in this letter that U.S. military intervention could tip the balance against Assad in the Syrian civil war—by, among other things, destroying his military assets and infrastructure as well as reducing the flow of arms from Iran, Russia, and others.

President Obama seemed on the same page when he said, during an interview aired this weekend on CNN, that while the Syrian situation is “troublesome,” his job as president is “to think through what we do from the perspective of … national interests.” He added, “Sometimes what we’ve seen is that folks will call for immediate action, jumping into stuff that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult situations, can result in us being drawn into very expensive, difficult, costly interventions that actually breed more resentment in the region.”

But Obama also said that if the evidence clearly shows that Assad has used chemical weapons “on a large scale,” that would “start getting to some core national interests … in terms of … making sure that weapons or mass destruction are not proliferating as well as needing to protect our allies, our bases in the region.”

This marked the first time that Obama has mentioned “core national interests” in the context of Syria. It may signal rising pressures to do something—and, again, Kosovo, where Clinton switched his views on intervention dramatically, serves as an intriguing parallel.

In his letter, Gen. Dempsey wrote, “We can destroy the Syrian air force” but he also warned that doing so could “escalate and potentially further commit the United States to the conflict.”

That would be the risk, and it’s the sort of risk that Obama is generally inclined to avoid. There have been some exceptions, most notably in Libya, where he concluded that the important thing was to get rid of Qaddafi and to let those on the ground—aided to some extent by the United States but more by allies with bigger stakes in the region—settle the aftermath.

This may be the position he takes in Syria, in consultation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other interested parties, which would play some role along with the NATO command. If he decides to use force, it’s the only position he could reasonably take. Given the threat, the humanitarian crisis, America’s standing in the region, and the importance of preserving international norms against the use of weapons of mass destruction, the best option might be to destroy huge chunks of the Syrian military, throw Assad’s regime off balance, and let those on the ground settle the aftermath. Maybe this would finally compel Assad to negotiate seriously; maybe it would compel the Russians to backpedal on their support (as NATO’s campaign in Kosovo compelled them to soften their support for Milosevic). Or maybe it would just sire chaos and violence. But there’s plenty of both now, and there might be less—a road to some sort of settlement might be easier to plow—if Assad were severely weakened or no longer around.

Analysis: How will the US and its allies strike Syria? | JPost | Israel News.

Navy ready to launch first strike on Syria – Telegraph.

Britain is planning to join forces with America and launch military action against Syria within days in response to the gas attack believed to have been carried out by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against his own people.

A couple mourn over the dead bodies of Syrian men after the alleged poisonous gas attack  Photo: AP

IDF Boosts Navy near Lebanon – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

IDF warship patrols in Red Sea

Israel news photo: Flash 90

The IDF plans to purchase a “Super Dvora Mk III” warship which will be stationed off the coast of Israel’s northern border, near Lebanon, the IDF website reports.

The ship, a fast patrol boat, has until now been used off the coast of Gaza, while the IDF has used only the Super Dvora Mk I and Mk II in the north.

A naval officer was quoted as saying, “This process will improve defense in the north. This Dvora ship is able to take off more quickly and to maneuver more easily. It has more radar capability and stronger firepower.”

The latest Super Dvora ships are already used off the coast of southern Israel, he noted, “and are proving to have excellent operative capabilities.”

The border at sea is unlike the border on land, he continued. There is no physical barrier preventing terrorism, only a line of buoys marking the border.

It is the soldiers on Israel’s Dvora-class ships that patrol and defend the border, he said.

The announcement regarding the boost to Israel’s naval strength along the border comes shortly after a rocket attack by Lebanese terrorists on northern Israel. Israel responded to the attack with an airstrike; the terrorist group behind the attack vowed revenge in response.

Recent attacks in Lebanon have led to concern that the unrest in Syria may be spilling over the border.